VacationSelector

Cusco or London?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The Plaza de Armas with the cathedral and La Compañía, Cusco
Cusco

Photo: Pedro Szekely, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Big Ben and Westminster Bridge, London
London

Photo: AXP Photography, Pexels License

Your match

Cusco
49
match

Wins on prices and nature and the outdoors with your weighting.

London
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on families and live music and the arts with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

CuscoLondon
Beaches & swimming. London leads by 22 points.22
Food & drink. London leads by 28 points.28
Culture & sights. London leads by 13 points.13
Nightlife. London leads by 46 points.46
Nature & outdoors. Cusco leads by 29 points.29
Day trips. London leads by 12 points.12
Good for families. London leads by 72 points.72
Getting around. London leads by 37 points.37
Shopping & style. London leads by 43 points.43
Affordability. Cusco leads by 58 points.58
Live music & performing arts. London leads by 68 points.68
Wellness & relaxation. London leads by 7 points.7
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Cusco and London.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyCuscoLondon
Daytime high20 °C24 °C
Night-time low1 °C14 °C
Rainfall in the month5 mm46 mm
SunshineNo figure7 hours a day
Daylight11 hours a day16 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Cusco
20
19
20
20
21
21
20
21
21
21
22
20
London
8
9
12
15
18
22
24
23
20
16
11
9
Rainfall, mm
Cusco
159
133
106
36
7
3
5
6
17
50
78
127
London
59
45
38
43
46
47
46
53
51
64
67
57
Daylight, hours per day
Cusco
13
13
12
12
12
11
11
12
12
12
13
13
London
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Cusco
No sunshine record
London
2
3
4
6
6
6
7
6
5
4
2
2

Where the figures come from

Cusco's station stands 151 m below the city centre, so the centre is likely a little cooler than the figures say.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cusco: 1991-2020 normals, Cuzco (3.7 km from centre). London: 1991-2020 normals, London Heathrow Airport (22.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCuscoLondon
SantiagoSCL
3 h 15 m
no fares
CUZ · 5 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km
BogotaBOG
3 h 5 m
€424-527
1 stop
CUZ · 5 km
10 h 40 m
no fares
LHR · 23 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-11 to 2026-12, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureCuscoLondon
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, QuechuaEnglish
CurrencySol (PEN)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5UTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number111 or 911112 or 999
Elevation3,399 m4 m
Main airportAlejandro Velasco Astete International Airport (CUZ)5 km from centre6 non-stop destinationsLondon Heathrow Airport (LHR)23 km from centre223 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days8 days

By the numbers

MeasureCuscoLondon
City population428,4508,799,728
People per km²-5,598
Museums within 10 km11215
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cusco or London somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.